Literary Awards Research Articles

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Anel de Vidro: Uma Novela em Quatro Capítulos

Anel de Vidro, Ana Luisa Escorel's first fictional work, published by the small publisher Ouro sobre Azul, of which she is the owner, was elected the best book of 2014 by the Sao Paulo Literature Award, which, until then, had never been given to a woman. This novelty reveals, among other things, the low visibility of the literature produced by women in Brazil. Based on this negative aspect of the Brazilian literary reality, the intention is to analyze this work of female authorship that addresses the theme of marriage and infidelity, in which the protagonist's voice overlaps those of the male characters. Regarding the differentiated form of Escorel’s writing, we will analyze its “minimalist” nature, choosing, for this reason, to treat the text as a novel, due to its brief and concentrated extension. Its aesthetic power, developed from a language that is sophisticated and intelligible, reflects the extreme subtlety of writing precise details that resemble both the structure of a short story and a poem, and allows to create intertextualities with the poetry of Manuel Bandeira and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Through this cut, this analysis aims at valuing the decided insertion of the author, editor and graphic designer Ana Luisa Escorel in the book market, through a narrative that disagrees with most of the contemporary fiction works produced in the country, whose domain is still markedly masculine.

Reflections on the Testimonial Genre and Casa de las Américas’ Literary Award (1970–2017)

In this article, I look into how the conceptualization of the testimonial genre has changed over time in response to different historical, political and cultural circumstances: that is, how it has been conceived by different actors – writers, intellectuals, politicians and critics – in the literary field. I focus on two key moments, and to begin with, I consider the institutionalization of the genre in the 1970s by means of Casa de las Américas’ literary award. This moment is examined in relation to the specific political situation in Cuba at that time, as well as with regard to the then lively cultural debate on literature and politics. Secondly, I reflect on how the testimonial genre was reconceptualized around the turn of the millennium as a response to the need to rethink the Revolution in the wake of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. I argue that the narrative of political revindication and the popular-subaltern modes, in vogue in the 70s and 80s, have been replaced by subjective-memorial accounts narrated by those who fifty years ago developed the ideals of the revolutionary movements.

“An Indigenous Sovereignty of the Imagination”: Reenvisioning the Great Australian Novel in Alexis Wright's Carpentaria

Alexis Wright's second novel, Carpentaria, received critical acclaim upon its publication by Giramondo in 2006. As the recipient of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2007, Carpentaria cemented Wright's position as the country's foremost Indigenous novelist. This article places Carpentaria within contemporary discussions of “big, ambitious novels” by contemporary women novelists by examining the ways the novel simultaneously invites and resists its inclusion into an established canon of “great Australian novels” (GANs). While critics have been quick to celebrate the formal innovations of Carpentaria as what makes it worthy of GAN status, the novel nevertheless opposes the integrationist and homogenizing myths that accompany canonization. Therefore, the article finds that Wright's vision of a future Australia involves moments of antagonism and mutual understanding between white settler and Indigenous communities. This article uses the work of Homi Bhabha to argue that Carpentaria demonstrates the emergence of a third space wherein negotiation between these two cultures produces knowledge that is “new, neither the one nor the other.” In so doing, Wright shows the resilience of Indigenous knowledge even as it is subject to transformation upon contact with contradictory ideological and epistemological frameworks.

4차 산업혁명과 창의 : 미학적 관점에서

The Fourth Industrial Revolution defines the Modern society, with the gadgets and internet that influences everyday life as we know. In the core of the fourth industrial revolution is the ‘Big Data’, a naming of a storage of data that are randomly and anonymously stored when we use PC, Mobile phones and any other electronic gadgets that sends the users choices, preferences and other detailed information to a Cloud storage systems. The paper tries to define if the works produced by an AI which are made by reconstituting the data through an Algorithm. And if the works so made can be labeled as being genuine work of Art. Although works produced through the use of an AI have won various literary awards today, there lingers the question as to the value of the works in question when the Works are sorely an end product of the data that are reconstituted from Works already defined as those with an Artistic value, per se. Defining what may and may not constitute as an artistic value is an esthetical question. A problem that has to be faced to discern what may be and may be not considered as work of art. The value of Art rests with certain criteria which may not be duplicated nor copied or reconstituted from data that are stored, the value denotes that which defines the Humanistic values such as ethics, the use of ambiguity, polysemy, equivocality and spontaneity etc., in short the ‘Mind.’

Individualism: Quest for Self-Actualization in The Diviners

The meaning of individualism has shifted over the decades in Canada. Canada was founded as a bilingual country, where individuals were supposedly strongly aligned with the principal and views of their groups and religions. Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as “A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individuals and stressing individual initiative action and interests also: conduct on paretic guided by such a theory.” According to Laurence, “To had to deprive them, but if a person does not look after herself in this world. No one else is likely to” (The Stone Angel, 173). Women were not permitted much individualism of any kind. Their economic and social roles were preset. They were not to express their views. They could not wish marriage of her own choice. They had no right regarding children. They were considered less in the matter of employment and payment. They were not open sexually. Indigenous Canadians were certainly not permitted much individualism. They were forced into reserves or back into the bush. They are not capable of being an individual in the way a male like Britishers, or French Canadians are. One of Canadian’s most accomplished writers, Margaret Laurence (1926-87) received many awards, including Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for The Diviners and A Jest of God. The Diviners (1974) was Laurence’s final novel and is considered one of the Classics in Canadian Literature. In her novel, she searches herself when she stands because this last novel is considered her autobiography. She goes through an identity crisis in her life. She explores her routes and identity where she stands. Many of the incidents in her life, her agony, and curiosity to know her routes are well expressed in this novel. In The Diviners, the story of writer, Morag Gunn is true in its spirit to Laurence’s own maturing, is the climate work of the Manawaka cycle. A complex and profound novel, it brings the Scottish pioneers and the metis outcasts of Manawaka together and climates is the joining of the past and present and the affirming of the future person in the person of Pique, the daughter of Morag and Jules Tonnere.

The plastic age of Russian poetry

Dergachev believes that modern poetry, along with any other art form these days, is going through an identity crisis, which has made it virtually impossible to distinguish true art from a parody of it. It is increasingly more common for journals and literary award short-lists to feature perfectly confusing oeuvre, to whose defense, however, fellow poets and nominating panels jump without hesitation. The author contemplates what criteria could help ordinary readers to orient themselves, and where in-group favouritism comes in. He claims that nowadays preferences of the few tend to shape the so-called ‘elite’ trend, which in turn forces its choice on hundreds of people, and the artificially complicated narrative and the shrinking poetic framework, along with a social or feminist agenda, propel the fact of the author’s position to dominance over the fact of artistic creation. The article offers an opinion about the problems of contemporary Russian poetry and attempts to look at them from an insider’s perspective as well as through the eyes of an outsider, by a blogger who has stayed out of the inner workings of journals.

Why modern poetry could use more ‘red ink’

The article offers to look at contemporary poetry from the viewpoint of an ‘ordinary reader,’ uninvolved in the literary process and unaffiliated with the notional ‘establishment.’ The author uses his position as a bystander, on the one hand, and a training that enables expert assessment (the author teaches Russian language and literature and holds a master’s degree in cognitive research), on the other, to examine the processes behind presentday literary awards and criticism of poetry. According to Smirnov, modern poetry and modern criticism both have disintegrated into separate segments within a common literary field. The continuous erosion of language norms and dilution of criteria have pushed contemporary art, and poetry in particular, away from the rules of the classical ontology. Thus, a text cannot be identified as pertaining to ‘poetry’ by such key characteristics as rhyme, rhythm, or use of figurative language. In this situation, the author pins his hopes on the institution of criticism: unless it engages in self-reflection in order to recognise the circumstances and phenomena behind its failures, constructive changes remain unlikely.

«ПРОЧИТАЛ ВАШ РОМАН И НИЧЕГО НЕ ПОНЯЛ, НО Я БЫЛ ТАК ПОТРЯСЕН!»

Mikhail Shishkin is a writer, author of the novels “One Night Befalls Us All”, “The Taking of Izmail”, “Maidenhair”, “The Light and the Dark”, as well as novellas, short stories, essays, and the guide “Russian Switzerland”. Winner of the literary awards “Russian Booker Prize” (2000), “Russian National Bestseller” (2005) and “Big Book Prize” (2011). He writes in Russian and German. In this issue of P&I, Mikhail Shishkin recalls the “War and Peace” as a cure, chooses the main film about contemporary Russia and tells what every father should teach his son. Interview by Ekaterina Maksimova.

Using crystallization to understand loneliness in later life: integrating social science and creative narratives in sensitive qualitative research

This article draws on crystallization, a qualitative framework developed by Laurel Richardson and Laura Ellingson, to show the potential of using sociological narratives and creative writing to better analyze and represent the lived experiences of loneliness among older people living in Australian care homes. Crystallization uses a multi-genre approach to study and present social phenomena. At its core is a concern for the ethics of representation, which is critical when engaging with vulnerable populations. We use two case studies from research on loneliness to illustrate an application of crystallization through different narrative types. To supplement our sociological narratives, we invited author Josephine Wilson to write creative narratives based on the case studies. Josephine was awarded the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2017 for Extinctions, a novel exploring themes such as later life and loneliness. By contrasting the two approaches—sociological and creative narratives—we discuss the implications of crystallization for qualitative research.

Enhancing social awareness development through multicultural literature

This article provides a research basis and practical applications for the inclusion of multicultural literature as a component of SEL programming. Multicultural text selections not only allow young adolescents to see themselves and others through the characters, but they also provide students with the opportunity to take part in activities and discussions that can help foster their social awareness development. I also provide suggestions of picture books, graphic novels, poetry, and novels, along with a list of applicable children’s literature awards.

How Useful is Bourdieu’s Notion of Cultural Capital for Describing Literary Markets?

AbstractBourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital and field, developed in the 1970s and 1980s, still provide systematic reference points for studies interested in literary cultures under market conditions. These concepts have found resonance in studies observing the changing organisation, structure, and social positions involved in the writing, reading, and circulation of literature. While both the conceptual clarity and the historical results Bourdieu achieved (in particular in his studyThe Rules of Art, originally published in 1992) have come under attack, both his key concepts and his multi-method approach function as a theoretical toolbox for present studies. The article discusses three studies (Childress 2017; English 2005; Guillory 1993) which make use of Bourdieu’s concept of capital in order to describe contemporary US publishing, the role of literary canons in higher education, and the status of literary awards. I argue that Bourdieu’s framework is productive in these cases when it is used in a heuristic way, when the idea of cultural and social capital is considered as processes and practices of valuation, and when it points to the political aspects of economies.

Freedom

Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media professional based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014), Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books), and A Spell for Living, which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for Agape Edition's Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and is forthcoming as a multimedia e-book, including music and Keisha's original artwork. Keisha has been widely published in national literary journals and magazines, including Kweli Literary Journal, Small Axe Salon, Interviewing the Caribbean, Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, The Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Mosaic Literary Magazine, African Voices Magazine, Streetnotes: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Caribbean in Transit Arts Journal, The Mom Egg Review, and others. Keisha is a past participant of the VONA Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition. In 2018, she was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. Keisha holds an MFA in creative writing from The City College, CUNY.

Two Chinese Working-Class Poems

Two Chinese Working-Class Poems by Xiao Hai Chinese Workers I am a Chinese worker Our revolutionary comrades are found in every corner of the Earth Perhaps consciously or perhaps unintentionally We truly stand here Traveling the world’s ups and downs with our hands that feed horses and chop wood I am a Chinese worker Lurking inside the desire of tall mansions in steel and concrete is our captive cut-price Youth The changes of the season are not ours Food and vegetables don’t need our attention All we can do is let the mystery of the words Made in China Fiercely flood every river leading to the four oceans and seven continents And at every intersection Take the spoils of the October Revolution To exchange for much sought-after ticket stubs to return home at year’s end I am a Chinese worker Let those days of monotonous workshop/factory life explode and tumble in the cogwheels of time On the quay, the suitcases that have crossed oceans and seas are stuffed with our Penniless and ephemeral pursuits The sparks of the years howl Torrential rain in the heart, endless winds Between lightning and thunder we ask ourselves When will we give our lives a wild run Eight thousand miles is too far Three thousand miles is too near We are in this vast land, nine million six hundred thousand kilometers Surviving the night I come from a village You come from a town Both of us fight barefoot in this dreamy big city Against the gunfire of the Second Industrial Revolution I wish to write those blond-haired yuppies with blue eyes across the ocean A letter A letter that can’t be delivered Tell them of the blooming of spring flowers Tell them how high birds fly Tell them those walking in the streets Wear clothes that appear decent Oh, but they make us feel embarrassed We sleep ashamed on the warm beds in the workshop Without warning we wake up in shock Full of incomprehension Full of drilling pain I want to ask them Why is the dawn sun covered by dark clouds Why isn’t there a rainbow after rain Why are nights in the city bright as day Why are rivers, once grand, now sparkling gold A shining place or somewhere with overgrown grass POETRY Xiao Hai (b. 1980) came from Shangqiu City in Henan Province, the philosopher Zhuangzi’s hometown. He has drifted in different cities as a migrant worker for many years and composed over five hundred poems. He was a member of the Picun Literature Group and won the Best Poet prize at the First Laborers’ Literature Awards. 36 WLT SPRING 2021 “CHINESE FACTORY” BY DANIELFOSTER437 IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 There grow Chinese workers standing side by side like the Great Wall There grow Chinese workers covering mountains There grow Chinese workers holding bronze tools There grow Chinese works who smoke and puff There grow Chinese workers who are armored There grow Chinese workers quiet as a riddle There grow Chinese workers There grow Chinese workers There grow Chinese workers I am a Chinese worker We Come from the Workshop The blue work clothes are covered in grease The oily hands smell of rust In the messy hair hides the light of the cutting machine I leave the workplace dragging my tired legs Forget about the assembly-line rush Forget about the production supervisor’s bark Forget about the deep solidified depression after being abandoned by fate I take off the antistatic garment shaped like iron netting and come from the workshop We are like the wandering wind We are like the drifting clouds We are the prodigal sons that have left home to travel day and night We fold love like bauhinia and orchid in dreams Some come through the Yellow River Some come through the Yangtze Some come through the boundless Milky Way Those bosoms are stuffed with gravel and mud We come from the workshop, covered in grease We come from the workshop wearing decaying moonlight We come from the workshop, our bodies mechanized Our communal living space is between the...

Truth and Reconciliation and Narrative Ethics, Form, and Politics

Truth and Reconciliation and Narrative Ethics, Form, and Politics Sarah Copland (bio) I am the Canadian daughter of British immigrants and a settler who now gratefully teaches and learns on land known as Treaty 6 territory, an area encompassing central parts of the present-day provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where a treaty between “Her Majesty the Queen” and “the Plain and Wood Cree Indians and other tribes of Indians” was signed in 1876 (Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba).1 I have benefitted tangibly and intangibly in my life from colonial structures of power that privilege white, native English-speaking settlers and in my work from a colonial academia that privileges Western theories and methodologies for literary criticism and education in general. I begin with this self-positioning because this essay is about the narrative ethics, form, and politics in and of artistic works purporting to contribute to reconciliation for groups that face historical and present-day injustice. Acknowledging my situatedness is a critical first step in formally framing literary criticism about such artistic works in a way that reinforces—rather than undermines—that criticism’s politics and ethics. As I address questions that are as pressing for theorizations of narrative ethics and politics generally as they are for specific cases hitting the media, including the peoples and communities affected by these cases, I participate in a conversation led by Indigenous scholars, writers, and activists. In this conversation, which focuses on the politics and ethics of representation, I draw on my expertise in narrative theory and narrative ethics to add a complementary engagement with the [End Page 229] politics and ethics of form. In doing so, I address two hitherto unaddressed questions. First, what bearing do the ethics of an author’s conduct in writing, publishing, and promoting a work as an act of reconciliation have on the ethics of the work itself, that is, the ethics of the dramatized and narrated events and relationships in the text’s action, and the narration itself? Second, how does the interaction between what we might call text-external ethics and text-internal ethics affect the political work a text is ostensibly undertaking to support and contribute to reconciliation for groups facing ongoing inequities?2 By bringing this conversation to an international context, I also model for scholars working with artistic responses to other Truth Commissions, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, or their equivalents, one version of what form-specific ethical political criticism might look like.3 In what follows, I address these questions and model this form-specific ethical political criticism through an engagement with controversial, award-winning Canadian writer Joseph Boyden’s novella, Wenjack. Published in the fall of 2016, Wenjack was part of a multi-artist, multi-media response to two coinciding events: the fifty-year anniversary of the death of Chanie Wenjack, an Indigenous (Ojibwe) boy who died while running away from a so-called Indian residential school, and the conclusion of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, whose report on the residential school system and its legacy was published in 2015. Shortly after Wenjack was published, a controversy surrounding Boyden’s Indigenous identity claims broke in national news, beginning with Robert Jago’s tweets from the IndigenousXca Twitter account and Jorge Barrera’s online piece “Author Joseph Boyden’s Shape-Shifting Indigenous Identity” in the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network News.4 By that time, Boyden had spent more than fifteen years publishing novels, short stories, and non-fiction exclusively about fictional and real-world Indigenous peoples and stories. He represented himself in text-internal and text-external venues (such as author biographies and media interviews) as Indigenous or Métis, received many literary awards (some of which targeted Indigenous writers), and served as the voice and face of Indigenous literature and of cultural commentary on Indigenous issues in the Canadian media. As the controversy unfolded through articles in a vast range of periodicals both before and after Boyden’s official published response, “My Name Is Joseph Boyden” (Maclean’s, August 2017), scholars, writers, and activists, [End Page 230] mostly Indigenous, addressed Boyden’s numerous, unsubstantiated ancestry claims from political angles, attuned to the intersecting dynamics...

Introduction: Christos Tsiolkas: Rage, Discomfort, Disgust … and Beauty

IntroductionChristos Tsiolkas: Rage, Discomfort, Disgust … and Beauty Barbara M. Hoffmann (bio) "This is what's so great about it. It doesn't have to be your own story. It can be a story you heard, something that happened to someone else …" "God, it sounds so complicated." "No, it's a load of fun, I promise you." "How do you win?" "At the end of the round we all vote on the best story." —Christos Tsiolkas, "Merciless Gods" (7) To say Christos Tsiolkas is a celebrated Australian author is, at this point, an almost absurd understatement. The vote has been cast over and over—by scholars, by readers, by those who deem a work of literary fiction worthy of the jump from page to screen—and Tsiolkas has won, over and over. In highlighting Tsiolkas's breadth of accolades in the author blurb of his most recent novel, 7½, the editor at Allen and Unwin mentions the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award for Dead Europe, the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Overall Best Book for The Slap, and the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction for Damascus, as well as shortlists and the fact that The Slap and Barracuda were "both adopted into celebrated television series." Per Henningsgaard, in his essay in this special section, notes, "In the years between the initial publication of The Slap and the release of the Australian television miniseries, the novel won the ALS [Australian Literature Society] Gold Medal, the Australian Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards, the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize—all in 2009." Eight days after the publication of 7½, Tsiolkas was announced as the recipient of the prestigious Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2021, awarded every three years to a "Victorian published author whose body of published work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life" (Melbourne Prize). The Melbourne Prize, then, awards an author not only for the quality of the work published but also for the author's more transcendent contribution to national culture, raising the question of how an author [End Page 24] makes such a "contribution" to "cultural life." The word "contribution" signals an active role and points to a dual purpose of art in both reflecting and shaping a culture. In a line that is oft referenced in discussions of the purpose of art, Hamlet instructs the players that the purpose of playing is to "hold, as 'twere, the mirror to nature" (3.2.20), showing "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure" (3.2.22). In other words, the great purpose of art is to present as exact an image as possible of the present times. Of course, Hamlet knew that art does much more than merely mirror—that a skillfully acted scene can have a material effect on those who consume it, as he hopes will happen to his uncle (3.1.583–85). In fact, it is only through such storytelling—Hamlet refers to the players as "the abstract and brief chronicles of the time" (2.2.520)—that Hamlet can obtain a seemingly unrecoverable truth. In order to have such an effect, though, artists must not limit themselves to reflecting that which is pleasant: in addition to showing "virtue her own feature," artists must also show "scorn her own image" (3.2.21). It is in showing that which is scorned, all vice and meanness and human frailty, that art has a transformative effect on its audience. Christos Tsiolkas is certainly an author whose work shows scorn its own image. Most of his works reflect those parts of a culture—of Australian culture, of European culture, of Judeo-Christian culture—that often remain hidden: the pornographic, the scatological, the profane. As Tsiolkas himself asserted at the beginning of a 2014 essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, "I didn't want to write polite books because what I wanted to say was not polite" (qtd. in Zuckerman). Put more bluntly, Jeffrey Zuckerman notes that Tsiolkas's "books...

A Sea

A Sea Shane McCrae (bio) We huddled in the smallest room, or twoOf us, two people might not make a huddleWe leaned together, your head on my shoulderSometimes, my head on yours, my hair, the newGray hairs that part the black hairs from the blackExactly as if once they were a seaNow parted by emerging land, the grayHairs touching your jaw, where it meets your neckThe slope between your jaw and your neck, touchingYour ear, and when you leaned your head on mine, yourEar must have rested then on the narrow line thereAcross the gray, from black to black, exactlyAs if to make a bridge, as if you might hearThe secret that would hold the sea together [End Page 173] Shane McCrae SHANE MCCRAE’s most recent book is Sometimes I Never Suffered. He has received a Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Whiting Writer’s Award. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. Copyright © 2021 Shane McCrae

The socio-psychological novel on the modern Czech book market (based on Alena Mornštajnová's works)

The modern Czech literary market (after 1989) has undergone significant changes. Its development was influenced, in particular, by the commercialization of the cultural sphere. The article describes the current (since 1989) literary process in the Czech Republic, presents the most successful — primarily from a commercial point of view — works in order to trace the most striking trends in modern Czech literature. The article provides an overview of contemporary Czech literary awards, nominations, as well as participating works. Particularly emphasized is the phenomenon of the growing popularity of works reflecting the events of recent history (the second half of the 20th century). An example of these trends are Alena Mornštajnová’s works — The Blind Map (2013), The Little Hotel (2015), Hana (2017) and Years of Silence (2019). When characterizing the novels, special attention is paid to the role of historical plots and motives, as well as their influence on the modification of the genre of the socio-psychological novel in modern Czech literature. Moreover, the article dwells upon on Mornštajnová’s artistic processing of historical material. She uses it as a method to depict psychological transformations of the characters, thus creating an effect of reader’s involvement (through “recognizing” oneself and one’s life story in the life story of the character).

On the issue of the crisis of humanitarian values and the prospects for its resolution

The article raises the issue of contemporary trends in the violation of the formation mechanisms of constructive attitudes of public consciousness associated with the development of information technologies. The starting point of the research is to substantiate the importance of constructive attitudes of the social worldview and to develop constructive value orientations in the social environment, as a condition for the stable existence of society. The authors evaluate the role of the contemporary advancement in information technologies and, in particular, in the spreading of numerous media, as a factor in the development of the crisis in the functionality of the family institutions, religion, and education. Besides assessing the socialization mechanisms expressed at the level of the family, education, and religious institutions, the authors note general cultural trends associated with the activation of information communication processes. The authors reveal a common trend in the development of the spiritual crisis and describe the self-reproduction mechanism of cultural trends at the digital communication level, as well as the formation of products that are focused on the mass consumer. It is proved that one of the important factors in the reproduction of information products with negative content is the predominance of the quantitative aspect of the evaluation of network information products. On the example of the institution of the literary award, the possibility of applying methods of qualitative assessment of network content is proved, which results in the possibility of stimulating the development of products that have constructive impact on the social worldview area.

“Really All Danger”: An Interview with Sebastian Barry

“Really All Danger”: An Interview with Sebastian Barry Mária Kurdi and Sebastian Barry (bio) from the Archives This article originally appeared in New Hibernia Review 8:1. sebastian barry was born in dublin in 1955, and received his education at the Catholic University School and Trinity College Dublin, where he studied Latin and English. His mother is the well-known actress Joan O’Hara, who has often appeared in his plays. After he spent most of his twenties in Europe— mainly France and Greece—Barry’s literary career started with the writing of poems and novels, including Time Out of Mind (1983) and The Engine of Owl-light (1987). In 1988, Barry turned to drama. His plays are inspired by the stories of his family and autobiographical elements, although much imagined and invented, and focus on historical and religious aspects of Irishness and alternatives of Irish identity. Although the language of the plays is poetic, their plots are straightforward and clear, usually leading to some kind of transcendence of tension or possible rupture. After the success of Boss Grady’s Boys (1988), which won the first BBC/Stewart Parker award, Barry became writer-in-residence at the Abbey Theatre in 1990. The sequence of plays he wrote after that includes Prayers of Sherkin (1990), White Woman Street (1992), The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (1995), The Steward of Christendom (1995), and Our Lady of Sligo (1998), the final two being unique in their exploitation of the dramatic monologue. His plays were published by Methuen and Faber in London, and have been translated into several languages. The Steward of Christendom in particular received wide international acclaim and awards, including the Ireland-America Literary Award and the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. In 1998 and 2002 Barry published two new novels: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, which was translated into seven languages, and Annie Dunne, which was long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary [End Page 90] Award. Both novels show thematic relations to the plays. Currently, Sebastian Barry lives in Wicklow with his wife and their three children. The interview started during Dr. Mária Kurdi’s visit to University College Dublin, in early October 2002. Soon after arriving in Dublin, she called the playwright, asking him to meet her for a talk she wished to record. Barry was willing to do that, but apart from a long conversation on the phone, they were not able to have a personal encounter because the writer was prevented from traveling into Dublin by illness. Therefore, the interview was actually conducted by email, with messages coming and going between Ireland and Hungary for several weeks until the final version below was achieved. ________ MK: Your career started with the writing of fiction. What turned you toward drama, after you had had a measure of success as a novelist? SB: I suppose the truth is I avoided the theater for a number of years, as being the domain of my mother, an Abbey actress. Looking back, that’s how it seems. At university, I wrote with suspect facility a couple of plays, heavily Beckettian and derivative. Then, till 1986 I wrote poems and prose. While my wife was away working for a couple of weeks, I wrote a draft of Boss Grady’s Boys [1988]. I suppose to some degree I was dissatisfied with the prose and verse I had been writing. I had lived near two such men as are presented in the play and felt a strong inclination to celebrate them—in a secret fashion to “protect” them—by means of a play. It had a lovely time, with Eamon Kelly and Jim Norton playing the brothers. It was a strange experience to have a “success.” We started to be able to pay our rent. MK: Family and personal histories appear to be central to most of your plays. Are you aware of their strong links with the history of the nation itself? SB: We are creatures in an elusive landscape of history. Names and definitions fly up like startled birds. I thought I detected in Boss Grady’s Boys a version of myself and my own brother, and from Prayers of...